Wednesday, August 17, 2011

"We did it in the 1990s and we can do it again today."

Montana's Max Baucus joined fellow "supercommittee" appointees Patty Murray and John Kerry in writing an optimistic op-ed in today's Wall Street Journal about their upcoming challenge. The full Journal piece requires a subscription, but the gist of the column is summarized by The Hill:

Senate Democrats on the supercommittee say the group needs to include stimulus for the economy in the deficit-reduction plan it has been tasked with producing by Thanksgiving.

...

“We know that our goal is to reduce spending. But we also know that America faces not just a budget deficit but also a jobs deficit. Nobody on this committee would be happy if we reduced the budget deficit but even more Americans end up losing their jobs,” Murray, Baucus and Kerry wrote in the op-ed.

"We know it may seem like the problems we face are intractable. But we were around in the 1990s when Democrats and Republicans came together to balance the budget and put us on the path to eliminating our national debt," they write. Those solutions called for tough choices, including higher taxes, and some congressmen even lost their seats because of their votes. "This moment demands leadership, but it also demands consensus," they write, and they say they will be prepared to compromise with their Republican colleagues.